Edmundson has worked with business and organizational leaders, founders and CEOs, social entrepreneurs and consultants, yogis, healers, activists and educators. Through the landscape of the body, he continues to observe that we have far more in common than we would like to believe and finds the essence of this commonality in the interconnectedness of being.

Edmundson's professional experience has taken him around the world, helping clients to connect to the essence of life intelligence within themselves, and allowing them to be more present with the people in their lives and, ultimately, with the work they are called to do in the world.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Executive Director
Green For All

Since taking leadership this year, Ellis-Lamkins has led the organization to a string of victories, including assembling a civil rights coalition that lobbied for two significant improvements to the House version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which secured funding for job training and guaranteeing broad access to clean energy jobs. These are the Act’s only provisions creating opportunity for low-income people and people of color.

Previously, she headed the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council and Working Partnerships USA, where she earned her reputation as “an inspirational and creative problem solver for working families” and won recognition on the 100 most powerful people in Silicon Valley (San Jose Magazine) and “40 to watch under 40” (Silicon Valley Business Journal). Her board positions include Progressive Technology Project, New World Foundation, Women’s Fund of Silicon Valley, San Jose General Plan Update Task Force, Central Labor Council Advisory Committee, Leadership Council of California Forward, and Partnership for Working Families.

Gil Friend
CEO
Natural Logic, Inc.

Natural Logic, Inc. provides strategy, design, and operations services that help clients build economic advantage through exceptional environmental performance. Friend's new book, The Truth About Green Business, profiles 52 green practices that are good for business and for the world. Friend is called “one of the country’s leading environmental management consultants—a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how” (Tomorrow Magazine).

Friend's past clients include Arizona Public Service, Auberge Resorts, Agilent Technologies, California Department of General Services, Coca Cola, Dean Foods, Equal Exchange, General Mills, Gilead Sciences, Granite Construction, Green Mountain Energy, Hewlett Packard, Levi Straus, Nike, Odwalla, PG&E, Sun Microsystems, and USGSA.  His forthcoming book is Profit on Purpose: Risk, Fiduciary Duty and the Laws of Nature. He has served on the board for Sustainable Business Alliance, Sustainable Berkeley, California Sustainable Business Council, OpenEco.org, CleanFish, and Green World Campaign.

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Margot Fraser
Founder, Former CEO
Birkenstock USA

Birkenstock USA is the sole importer of Birkenstock footwear and sells to more than 3,005 retailers and 200 licensed, privately owned stores. When Fraser started the business out of her home in 1967, ergonomic and functional footwear was unknown and was met by resistance and ridicule. Her undying conviction in the product resulted in the new category of footwear, Casual Comfort, an accomplishment that led to her induction into the National Shoe Retailers Hall of Fame in 1997. In the same year she was named the Ernst and Young Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year. All this without any formal business education.

In 1993 Fraser established an ESOP to share the profits with employees and as an exit strategy. In 2002 the ESOP acquired all of the remaining shares and owned 100%, and in 2007 sold to the German manufacturer which continues the operation in the US. Her board positions include Presidio College of Management and the Family Service Agency of Marin.

Priya Haji
CEO and Co-Founder
World of Good, Inc.

Priya Haji is the CEO and co-founder of World of Good, a company dedicated to building ethical shopping experiences with mainstream retail partners, including Whole Foods and eBay. Launched in 2004, World of Good has built market access for thousands of artisan producers through more than 1,200 retail locations across the country, impacting the lives of more than 25,000 individuals in over 70 countries around the world. WorldofGood.com, launched in partnership with eBay, is the world’s largest online marketplace to offer consumers one destination to shop for thousands of products that positively impact people and the planet.

In 2009, Haji was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for her professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. In her 20s, Haji was co-founder and executive director of Free at Last in East Palo Alto, a national model program to address substance abuse-related issues. With $10 million in special investments, and a team of 60, the organization grew to serving 3,000 people per year. For her work with Free at Last, Haji was recognized by the DoSomething Foundation, MTV and Mademoiselle Magazine as one of America's Ten Most Outstanding Young Leaders. She has an undergraduate degree from Stanford and an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Bob Johansen
Author
Leaders Make the Future
Former President, Institute for the Future

Rob Lederer
President, Senior Business Coach
Management Resources

Management Resources’ team of professionals assist as coaches and consultants to help ‘good businesses be great businesses and great businesses be green businesses.’  Lederer is passionate about helping owners and management teams of fast growth, green and socially responsible businesses become great managers and improve their company’s financial, social, and environmental performance.

Having grown up in his family’s imprinting and manufacturing business, he helped manage its growth from 90 to 450 employees. He holds an MA in Environmental Policy at University of Chicago.

Ted Levinson
Senior Lending Manager
RSF Capital Management, Inc.

Ted Levinson is the Senior Lending Manager at RSF Social Finance where he manages the organization’s $75 million portfolio of loans to non-profits and businesses with a social mission. 

Prior to RSF, he was the Business Manager at a start-up school and a bamboo company in Indonesia. He also spent ten years in small business finance. Levinson is a graduate of Tufts University, where he was a NEH Younger Scholar. 

Lindstrom is a long time student of community economic development and community exchange systems. He worked for the E.F. Schumacher Society as staff and program developer from 2003 to 2008. He was a founding board member of the BerkShares, one of the most widely acclaimed local currencies located in the Southern Berkshire region of Massachusetts. In 2004, he organized a conference for the Schumacher Society titled Local Currencies in the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Money, Building Local Economies, Renewing Community.

Lindstrom is currently a student at Goddard College and is writing his senior thesis on the philosophy, theory, and spirituality of money. He serves as the advisor and consultant to a number of complementary currency projects through out North America including GETS Plus, an incubator for green business barter and exchange systems.

Marquez joined Organic Valley in 1995 and has helped to grow the business from $5 million to $527 million. As the largest organic farmer cooperative in the United States, it consists of over 1,300 family farmers.  She has been involved in food and farming since the mid 1970s and is a frequent speaker at Natural Products Expo, National Nutritional Foods Association, American Marketing Association, Organic Trade Association, Food Marketing Institute, and WKKF Foundation. 

She has pioneered the Food Alliance eco-label and is currently working to start a new national tradition, The Earth Dinner. Her board positions include the Organic Trade Association, Organic Center for Promotion & Education, and Oregon Tilth Certification Advisory Board. 

Charisse McAuliffe founded GenGreen in 2007 with the overall mission of wanting to make it easier for people seeking to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle. Today, GenGreen Digital Media is a leading web and mobile company focused on connecting green businesses with green consumers. GenGreen maintains the largest verifiable database of green businesses and organizations in North America with over 65,000 companies currently in their system. GenGreen provides access to this highly relevant, local information to green businesses and consumers through hyper-local websites and smart phone mobile applications for the iPhone, Blackberry and Google Android. GenGreen supports large and small businesses in reaching the green consumer via a range of options including: advertising and sponsorship, mobile coupon programs, and branding services.

McAuliffe was named one of the top 40 business leaders under the age of 40 in 2008 by the Northern Colorado Business Report, and was named one of the "7 Hottest CEO's of cool green companies" by Treehugger.com in March 2009. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Association.

Jenny McNulty
Executive Director
Urban Solutions

Jenny McNulty is Executive Director of Urban Solutions, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization which fosters the well-being of disadvantaged communities by helping to increase neighborhood commercial vitality, strengthen small businesses, create jobs, encourage diversity, and promote sustainability. McNulty oversees all of Urban Solutions' programs and launched the Green Business Initiative in 2008 to assist small business owners with adopting environmentally sustainable business practices and to promote sustainability awareness.

McNulty joined Urban Solutions in 2002, developing its Sixth Street Economic Revitalization Program and providing small business consulting and loan packaging services to low income entrepreneurs. She has extensive experience in both the non-profit and private sectors: teaching environmental education in the Ecuadorian Amazon, managing micro-credit programs in West Africa, and doing profitability analysis for Providian Financial in San Francisco. Jenny holds an MBA from the University of Bristol and is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Deborah Nelson
Executive Director
Social Venture Network

Pearson leads the Law Office of Lara Pearson, Ltd., an environmentally and socially conscious intellectual property law firm that focuses on serving like-minded, consciously run businesses.

Pearson's commitment to the green movement is evident in her pro bono legal work for Green America, Green Festival, 1% for the Planet, Conservation Value, Rock the Earth, Tahoe Rim Trail Association and Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Association. Lara also serves as the Secretary of the Board of Directors on 1% for the Planet and on the Advisory Board of Rock the Earth and is an Affiliate Member of SVN.

As the Head of Environmental Initiatives at eBay Inc., Reder focuses on improving the environmental performance of eBay’s operations and teaming with eBay's employees and users to encourage more sustainable behavior in the office, on the road, in seller business operations and around buyer product choices. She is also the co-founder and leader of eBay's employee ‘Green Team.’

Prior to joining eBay in 2006, Reder spent five years as a professional staffer to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, where she sought and advanced policy solutions in a wide range of issue areas and drove productive, multi-sector dialogue. She holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BA in government from Dartmouth College.

Joey Shepp
Founder and CEO
Earthsite, LLC

After eight years of design and marketing to green businesses, Earthsite was founded with the vision of creating a global network of sustainability websites. Clients are assisted in developing effective marketing strategies.  As the senior Internet  Marketing Director for Green Festival, Shepp is continuing to refine the online marketing strategies and information architecture as the event grows. He speaks on the topics of new media, building sustainable brands, and web strategy.

Shepp holds degrees in ecological design from the University of California Santa Cruz, and an M.B.A in Sustainable Enterprise from the Green MBA program now at Dominican University of CA.

Morgan Simon
Co-Founder
Responsible Endowments Coalition

Simon co-founded the non-profit organization that supports the growth of responsible investment practices on over 95 college and university campuses nationwide. She is also on the boards of the Social Venture Network, La Pena Cultural Center, and SJF Advisory Services.

As a performer, she has been a part of Susana Arenas Dance Company and Obakoso as a drummer, singer and dancer, and most recently was invited to Havana to record two albums with Lazaro Pedroso, Edigbe and Songs for Egun.

Jerry Stifelman
Founder and Creative Director
The Change

Woody Tasch
Chairman and President
Slow Money

As an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and board member, Tasch has been involved with Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, Sustainable Nantucket, Prince Ventures, Healthdata International, CERES, National Mentor, Greenway, Nantucket Education Trust, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, CIMMYT (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and The Farmers Diner.

Slow Money was formed to catalyze the flow of investment capital to small food enterprises and to promote new principles of fiduciary responsibility to support sustainable agriculture and the emergence of a restorative economy. Tasch is Chairman Emeritus of Investors' Circle, a network of angel investors and foundations that has invested $133 million in 200 early stage companies.

Weiss is responsible for overseeing the seller recruitment process for WorldofGood.com by eBay. Weiss comes to the WorldofGood.com by eBay team with more than 15 years of management and business development experience for a variety of media and e-commerce companies, including Triathlete Magazine and Intagio Media Services. He helped to launch a successful online travel publisher called Perfect Escapes, a consumer travel website providing performance-based advertising solutions to travel providers.

Earlier in his career, Weiss was the Associate Publisher of Mother Jones magazine for nearly a decade, where he developed the LOHAS advertising categories and initiated new media and commercial initiatives for the organization.

Bryan Welch
Publisher and Editorial Director
Ogden Publications, Inc.

On any given day, Welch spends his early mornings tending to his Kansas farm and his lunch polishing an essay for Utne Reader. Welch’s family raises cattle, sheep, goats and chickens on their 50-acre farm – all freely ranged. Ogden Publications, Inc., a diversified media, consulting, and marketing company publishes 10 magazines on self-sufficiency, sustainability, and rural lifestyles (including Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home and The Herb Companion)  Its web sites, including the carbon-offset shopping site www.EarthMoment.com, attract more than 3 million visitors/month. 

Before starting Ogden in 1996, Welch spent 19 years in the newspaper business in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Washington and Connecticut. He has a master’s degree from Harvard University and holds board positions on the Magazine Publishers of America, Kansas Land Trust and Down Home Ranch Foundation.

Green America Staff

Alem made the transition from the corporate world to Green America in January 2006 so that he could "...align [his] passion with [his] profession." As Director of Information Technology, he is responsible for guiding the organization's information technology strategy both to enable the day-to-day work of staff and to position Green America to leverage new and evolving technologies and mediums of communication.

Alem was elected to the board of Green America in 2009 and has endeavored to bring his extensive experience in strategic planning and project management to bear in the boardroom. Outside the office, Alem is a grassroots organizer with over 14 years of experience working with communities in the Arab world, Europe and the United States around social justice and human rights causes. Alem has a BS in Systems Engineering and Management Information Systems from George Mason University.

Bootzin is a piano and guitar instructor teaching life lessons through the medium of music. He also works as a human rights activist focusing on issues in Burma (met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and brought supplies to refugee camps) as well as Israel/Palestine (interviews with Bedouin in Israel, Gaza, and Bethlehem). 

Locally, Bootzin volunteers at an after school club called Running Rebels, and volunteers as the caretaker of a meditation/relaxation space in Milwaukee. Nationally, he volunteers every summer at the A.A.N.R Youth Leadership camps as the music instructor and guide in daily meditations and Ta'i Chi, and manages the mainstages at Green Festivals.

Clive supports the Green Business Network in events, marketing, membership services, web development, and policy work. A longtime grassroots activist for social justice, she fundraised door-to-door for progressive candidates and organizations, fought Proposition 8 in California, lobbied Congress as part of the Power Shift 2009 youth summit on climate change, and most recently served on the DC Host Committee for the National Equality March.

Before joining Green America, Clive rocked out as co-founder of a Japanese music marketing company. She and her business partners cultivated an international music community website, and developed and ran a global ticket sale and four-day tour of Tokyo for rock fans from over twenty countries.

Davidson has been at Green America since March 2004 and she directs outreach and programming for the Washington, DC Green Festival, and coordinates the Corporate Innovators Policy.

Before Green America, she campaigned for forest protection with the National Audubon Society and the American Lands Alliance, and co-founded the Gifford Pinchot Task Force in Olympia, Washington. When not at work, she can be found at the yoga studio or making oversized protest art from cardboard and leftover paint.

Alisa Gravitz
Executive Director
Green America

Gravitz has helped lead the national agenda to create a socially and environmentally responsible economy for more than 25 years. As the executive director of Green America, Gravitz has pioneered effective techniques for addressing issues of sustainable consumption and production with American consumers and businesses. She is the recipient of the 2006 Sustainability Award exemplifying economic, ecological responsibility and was named one of the six most important people who are changing the way companies think about the environment by the Green Business Letter.

Gravitz is also a nationally recognized leader in the social investment industry. She authored Green America's acclaimed Guide to Social Investing, with over a million copies in print. As vice president of the Social Investment Forum, she played a key role in the dramatic growth of the socially responsible investing industry to $2.7 trillion dollars from less than $40 million in 1985. She holds board positions with Ceres, the Positive Future Network, People 4 Earth, Network for Good, OptiSolar and Mission Markets.

Denise Hamler
Director, Green Business Network™
Director, Green Festivals®
Producer, Green Business Conference

Rebecca Shaloff
Screening Director
Green Business Network™

Shaloff joined the Green Business Network staff in 2008 after three years helping to grow the social labeling movement at RugMark. As Screening Director, Shaloff oversees the process for business members to earn the coveted “Seal of Approval,” develops standards for various industries and ownership types, and educates the wider public about what this seal signifies.

Her prior experience as a labor researcher in Mumbai, India and community organizer in New York City enhances her commitment to the deep, dual definition of green that Green America stands for. Last year Shaloff and another Green America staffer co-authored Green and Just Celebrations, a purchasing guide for Washington DC families planning lifecycle events.  She also sits on the Board of Directors of AVODAH, an organization that matches young people with domestic frontline anti-poverty groups.    

Desireé Wolford
Business Membership Coordinator
Green Business Network™

Wolford came to Green America after working for many years in the alternative dispute resolution field. She spent five years working as the Mediation Program Director and Community Education Coordinator for a nonprofit in Annapolis, MD. She graduated from the Executive Nonprofit Management program at Georgetown University and completed undergraduate studies in Business Administration.

Prior to joining the Green Business Network, Wolford was the member services and administrative coordinator for the Social Investment Forum at Green America. Outside of Green America, Wolford is active in her community working on a variety of education issues. She was recently elected to a two-year term as PTA President and serves on her town Education Advisory Committee.